


Terrible

by zorilleerrant



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bullying, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Child Tom Riddle, Gen, High Empathy Tom Riddle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 12:42:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13434945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zorilleerrant/pseuds/zorilleerrant
Summary: He can feel the rough brick scraping against his back, through thin layers of itchy clothes, and he tries not to listen. He doesn’t need to listen, does he? He’s heard what they have to say before, and it doesn’t matter.





	Terrible

The older boys have him pinned to the side of the building. He can feel the rough brick scraping against his back, through thin layers of itchy clothes, and he tries not to listen. He doesn’t need to listen, does he? He’s heard what they have to say before, and it doesn’t matter – he’s asked people he can trust, and nothing they say holds any weight at all.

It’s not important if they’re saying that he’s poor (that he has less than any of them, that he has to steal from other orphans just to decorate his room), it’s not important if they’re saying no one loves him (not even a keepsake album from his mother, who had rather died than raise him), it’s not important if they’re saying he’s too small, too sickly, jaundiced with skin pulled taut against his bones (a punishment, maybe, for inflicting himself on everyone else in this world, a blight on his person for the blight on his soul), it’s not important. It doesn’t matter what they’ve chosen to say, this time, it doesn’t matter that he’s being teased at all.

And his eyes lose focus and his heart picks up speed when they tell him he’s frightened, when they say he stares into the distance and trembles during class. That he shies away from even teachers, the harmless old men that even Tom could beat up. Maybe.

And he thinks, if they’re so confident, why do they pick on a child half their age and half their size? (It’s because he doesn’t fight back. He knows this.) But he can’t hear anything right now. He counts his breaths.

Taunts are harmless. Did you know? A taunt glances off and leaves no bruise, no soft discolored spot to poke and prod, no sensitive blemish to worry at and wince and wonder. An insult is not an action, per se, and is not actionable. Mocking leaves no marks.

There are things that leave marks, things like slapping and choking and the ring of closed fists against bone, but those aren’t much important either. It’s a sort of camaraderie, Tom knows, the sort of way young boys prove friendship to one another. Tom knows this sort of thing is common. Tom knows, too, that the muscles hurt more when they’re tensed, and that breathing is harder when you’re anxious, that laughing sometimes makes them angry but sometimes makes them laugh with you. Tom knows to relax.

Tom has a great deal of knowledge. He prides himself on it.

But sometimes when Tom relaxes he loses his tight grip on that strange force that surrounds him, that lends itself to his will, that reaches out in every direction away from him and lays low his attackers in a perfect half circle around him.

Their breaths come soft and shallow (sleeping, not sick, not dying), tiny puffs of smoke from mouths open in what could be surprise, and Tom knows he should feel mighty, like a knight of old, like a prophet calling on God’s wrath, because this power he holds is more than him, and it wouldn’t be granted to him if he wasn’t worthy.

But instead he just feels terrible, and clasps his hands around his neck as he strains to breathe, and wonders why he can’t stare death in the face with the bravery of those before him.

 

He doesn’t like having to deliver letters. Or, that isn’t precisely true, rather, he likes to deliver letters quite a lot, in the general case, likes making himself useful, likes the half word of praise that belies the smile of obligation, likes having something to do with time that should be spent with family (if the many lectures are anything to go by). It’s just that a few of the letters he can’t stand. Well. Their recipients. The letters themselves are fine (he assumes).

But this is Tom, the urchin insouciant, the bearer of letters and parcels and word of mouth. (He has a good memory, Tom, he can learn a whole verse in the time it takes to tell it.) And he does odd jobs of any kind, for less pay than the other orphans, for a bite of food, or a bit of warmth, or sometimes just a well-placed word of kindness. (Doesn’t he get fed in that orphanage of his? Oh, of course he does, but you know how boys are at that age.) So he’ll fetch and carry, build, paint, whatever an extra pair of hands is needed for, and he’ll do it with no complaint, and he’ll take messages wherever he goes next, always moving, always finding some new work to put his mind to. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings. Tom never disappoints.

(This isn’t true. He disappoints a lot, but he hides it when he does, because it doesn’t do for people to know, not when they were counting on you. He hides a lot, and when he can’t, he calls upon that other force, the one that might be demonic, though he hardly cares at the point he has to use it, does he?)

He needs the jobs, so he takes them, whether he wants to do them or not. He needs those jobs, and he’ll need the goodwill when he’s an adult, when he needs jobs all the more, because Tom does plan to find a way to support himself, not relying overly on the one skill he sometimes thinks he imagined. He needs the experience, and he needs the rapport, and he needs the trust. One day he won’t have a home to go back to.

He dreads growing too old for this system of apathy and violence.

He brings the letter. He doesn’t clutch it too tightly in hand, lest he tear it, or crease it, or leave it marked with greasy fingerprints, smudges of ink still clinging to his skin. He holds it gently, reverently, as if he cares as much for its contents as the man who penned it, or the man who he carries it to, steps slowing with every heartbeat.

He steps carefully around the desk, keeping even his breathing minimal, timing it to keep silent until the last possible moment. He hates it when the men (this man) look up and stare, their eyes following every accidental movement, every hair out of place. (The man does not look up. Tom stands patiently, waiting to be acknowledged, waiting to be relieved of his burden, to be thanked or not thanked, to be able to leave.) Tom likes carrying letters, but sometimes he does not like delivering them.

The man reaches out with one hand to take the letter from Tom, and it brushes against him, and everything shifts in what he thinks for a moment is a burst of otherworldly force, but it’s just Tom nearly throwing himself backwards, just Tom braced against a desk he was sure he was farther from just a moment before when the world was steady, when he wasn’t so dizzy and could easily stand. Just Tom, who managed to catch himself instead of crashing to the ground, who knocked over no important charts or models or books, just a bottle of ink that costs more than any orphan’s life is worth, spilling them on words more precious than his breaths. The black sludge soaks into the paper slowly but persistently, testament to the quality of both the paper and the ink. Tom thinks this is what people mean when they call something terrible yet beautiful.

He’s sorry, he truly is (well, he is sorry, anyway, he’s not sure if he _is_ ), he didn’t mean it, Tom tries his best, but he’s, you know, he’s Tom. You know Tom.

The man smiles tightly at his apology and does not let him leave.

 

He tries to ignore the older boys as they follow him. He remembers how easy it used to be, how effortless, how they were kind and things were simply back when he could still hold his tongue. (It isn’t his tongue that got him in trouble, he reminds himself, but his powers, but those are harder to control when the fear of being trapped sets in.)

They’re not important. He knows this now in a way he didn’t even one year ago, in a way that takes time not to learn but to truly apprehend. They don’t bite the way they used to, but their meaning is clearer, and the bite of threat is more apparent on his fellow children’s lips. But the words themselves aren’t important, and Tom has more important things to hear than the ramblings of children who know better than to think they can kill the likes of him.

He spins towards them in righteous fury, fist raised, even though he knows better. He doesn’t have to let the words get to him, but for some reason he does. He wants to be the Tom they say he is, the Tom that terrorizes the younger children, the Tom that takes what he wants and damn the consequences, the Tom that’s forgotten how to feel. The Tom that harms instead of the Tom that hurts. But he can’t even stop himself from rising to the petty bait, can’t stop himself from letting a generic insult slung at him at random, well, hit home.

But now he’s stopped, and they’re still larger than he is, and three of them this time, and he can’t think of anything to say before he’s caught in a tangle of fists and knees, and he doesn’t know why it’s always him they target (he knows why; it’s because he fights back) and he lets himself go limp in the flurry because that’s how they know they’ve beaten him. Tom knows when it’s fruitless to fight, when he gains more by giving up, when to hide and when to run and when to stick up for himself.

Actually, right now is more of a fighting back sort of time, but Tom finds that doing the helpful thing is harder when he’s so tired of caring all the time. Just for a moment, he stops caring, and he stops fighting, and he wishes he could just sleep.

But he’s forgotten that he has his lunch with him, the bits he could save, that he hasn’t hidden them away for later yet, and he’s back up, clawing at them, undoing all his tenuous progress because they’re pulling it away from him, and of all the ways Tom doesn’t want to die, in the cold with hunger chewing him open from the inside is at the top, and his insides are twisted up, and he sees them split his bread between them and his stomach hurts so much he’s liable to vomit what he _has_ eaten today, and he wonders what else they can take from him.

(He knows that, too. He’s seen a lot and said little. Other things he’s learned over the past few years: very few people care, and then, only about specific matters.)

They take a letter from him too, but that’s alright; it’s spotted with blood already and he’d risk a lashing carrying it himself, and (Tom holds his hand against a wound at random, trying to press the blood back inside) at least it isn’t a parcel, which they tend to open and paw through the contents of. Letters hold little interest to the likes of them (though Tom has become quite adept at opening and resealing them with his little gift, because he knows the value of information) and tend to get where they’re going.

He doesn’t mind. Tom can forgo a sweet or a coin when he can also escape the clutches of those who would wrong him (though, of course, again we ought to be more specific), and anyway he’s done well enough over the years without the sweets or coins so many other children seem to get. He’s tried to find a pattern, and he hasn’t yet, and though Tom is very good at patterns and well aware of those he’s likely to find, he has a sneaking suspicion his caretakers simply like to pit one child against another and watch them tear each other to shreds.

But of course it’s the principle of the thing, isn’t it, that has Tom fighting again, even though he rather thought he was done with all that. Sometimes he finds that his body does strange things without his input when he lets his mind wander for more than a few moments at a time. Sometimes he stares off and comes back to staring, sometimes it’s to crying and curling up, sometimes it’s to wordless shouting and flinging his limbs at anything within reach.

And his own gut clenches again in sympathy when he sees one of them doubled over, gasping, and now is a bad time for that (when other people’s problems start crowding in again, Tom knows it’s only moments before he starts feeling every injury), and he tries to say something. An apology, maybe.

But he draws in only half a breath before he chokes on it, staring up at the sky in surprise, angry faces above him. Then they aren’t anymore. He feels it like the fire heating the kitchens, licking at his skin but never working its way all the way through, freezing inside even as he sweats. It rushes outward, into the welcoming cold, knocking everyone silent with the suddenness of it, with the soothing against winter aches, or the scald against oppressive summer air. They clutch their hands to themselves as they stare at him, in some cross between wonder and condemnation.

And he still feels terrible, but now also like perhaps something important happened.

They’re crouched like animals, waiting for him to make his move, but he can’t see any marks on them (proof, the cynical part of his mind corrects) and they look, God willing, more angry than injured, and perhaps if Tom just leaves them be they’ll move away from here and find something else to occupy themselves and never speak of it again.

Not that he minds. He has…he has more important things to care about than the jibes of some jealous little boys.

Things like losing control of this power that he’s usually so careful about, this force that he thought he understood, but if he can’t control it then it can control him, and so Tom thinks, very, very carefully. He can’t tell anyone, of course (they can’t tell anyone, no one would believe them, and for once that works to Tom’s benefit), but he can study, and he can practice. He doesn’t have time to be sorry over one little mistake. Something has to change.

 

He watches the younger boy, the new arrival, this recently orphaned charge of the kind of family they all claim to watch without jealousy boiling behind their eyes. This boy with a shy but kind smile, round rosy cheeks and the plump fingers of the well-fed, an openness of body language that will bring him nothing but pain, here. Tom considers taking the boy under his wing. Considers making him a sort of apprentice, a protégé. Considers passing on his knowledge, now that someone sorely needs it.

Not for very long, of course, because every child that passes through those doors needs his knowledge, and how many of them would use it against them? He can hardly pick and choose based on something as arbitrary as whether someone tugs at his heartstrings. It’s not like the boy is going to die.

He just cries constantly and never speaks, clutches tight to him those objects he finds precious, tries to please the adults too many hours of the day, torments himself for a single smile, tries to hide from people whose goals he doesn’t understand yet. And what good would it do for Tom to tell him that some of the other children just enjoy pain, just enjoy inflicting what they can on who they can find, that the only measure of safety is some supernatural force the child most likely doesn’t even have access to?

The boy remembers his parents, at least, and Tom bites his tongue before the jealousy shows on his face, because he doesn’t have the luxury of mourning parents he’s only met in too-real dreams he puts too much faith in because he knows more about the impossible than anyone else is likely to. The boy doesn’t need Tom’s help.

(He does, though. They all do. But Tom doesn’t have enough hours in the day to care for everyone, so he may as well care for no one at all. It’s more efficient, that way.)

The boy must see him looking, must read the looks of pity for what they are, because one day he walks up to Tom and wets his mouth awkwardly for unrelenting seconds before he speaks, his gaze flickering to the unfinished food in Tom’s bowl, rapidly cooling and being devoured more slowly, and Tom has to sigh and shake his head. It’s not that he doesn’t understand, he does, the food becomes less every year as Tom grows bigger, and he knows what it’s like to want to beg someone for help (though never more than once, of course), and when he responds, he’s careful to make his voice kind.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to share his food, of course, it’s just that they’re all hungry, it’s just that one child is no more important than the rest, is no more important than this burden seemingly Tom’s alone to bear, that he has to eat if he hopes to learn what he’s meant to do with it, and no matter how imploringly he’s looked at…but advice he can give. He tells the boy to eat slowly, savoringly, despite how little appeal each meal has, to cherish what he’s given and trick his stomach into thinking something lavish has befallen him. He thinks, the boy will learn this lesson soon enough, but no harm in hastening the knowledge, in lessening the hurt.

Because Tom has eaten too quickly and been left to the mercies of hunger cramps, Tom has eaten too slowly and had his meal taken away, Tom has wished too hard for better food or given in to his distaste, he knows these things. There are things he can teach that can’t come back to hurt him. He’s not risking the things one must risk if one chooses to forgo food, not to feed a single hungry mouth, but he’s not risking anything to share things that can be shared without giving them up. Tom thinks himself rather generous for this.

It’s a terrible feeling to see the hope die in those young eyes, and Tom isn’t sure which of them has the worst of it, but what hurts today will help every other day of that boy’s life, and perhaps Tom isn’t the best for _anyone_ to ask. Tom thinks perhaps a polite rebuff today, along with that small piece of advice, will mean the boy is less hungry tomorrow, and less again the day after, and still less the day after that, that maybe the hunger will stop bothering everyone else the way Tom has convinced himself it no longer bothers him.

Feeling conflicted about it helps no one, though, and so Tom sets those feelings aside, and focuses instead on something, anything, that matters.

 

He flinches when the words fall about the boy’s head. Or, well, that internal ripple shivers up his spine as he stands stiff, straight, eyes slightly downcast and with a somber turn to his mouth, hands tucked respectfully behind his back. Just another prefect, and he’s worked too hard to get to this point to have some…some _brat_ ruin it for him. He hears the yelling, but he doesn’t hear what’s being yelled, letting the sound wash over him until the softening cadence tells him that his head of house is done.

There are some – teachers mostly – who think he lets the children go because he’s softhearted, that he brings them to be disciplined only grudgingly and with great trepidation because he’s too compassionate, too kind. He lets them think it. Others – his fellow Slytherins, for the most part – think he holds it over them as some kind of threat, to tease out their compliance, building debt after debt into the sort of work of art they can appreciate. He lets them think it, too. There’s a certain kind of power in being the person willing to let anyone hang, even his closest friends, who gains some sort of perverse glee out of bringing these children to, oh, call it justice. Who turns away because he can, not because he has to.

It’s not like it’s life or death, anyway. It’s not like anything _really_ bad will happen to them, it’s not like they won’t still wake up with magic in the morning, knowing how to wield it, knowing what to do, having a purpose in life. Maybe they’ll be just a little more scared of big, bad Tom, the prefect who knows too much. (It’s not his fault he can’t stop hearing their muttering, can’t stop seeing when their movements change from relaxation to tension, can’t stop feeling the chill in the air when someone is _planning something_ -)

And sometimes, he can loom threateningly and wheedle a promise or a bribe or _something_ out of them, some reason for him to leave them be instead of dragging them before yet another authority figure, some measure of Tom the Capricious who Knows What He’s Doing, Tom who knows where he’ll be once he’s finished with school, which is only step one in a long dance no one else can even hear the music for.

It’s how Tom likes to think of himself, the days he has the wherewithal to think of himself at all. A manipulator, merciless, calculating, cold and brilliant, like a diamond slowly being polished to a perfect shine.

He’s some kind of rock, anyway. He can tell from all the cracks running under his skin, the way he’s sometimes impossible to cut and sometimes just crumbles, his sheer mundanity, the colors that seem to shine with such depth but only in this tiny part of him he has to turn just the right way for anyone to see. The way someone would drop him in a river and walk away not having lost anything, while he stared back up through the clear water begging not to drown.

He listens to this terrible thunder, and by Merlin if he doesn’t care.

 

He feels bad, he tells himself. He feels terrible for killing her.

But no, no he doesn’t.

Feeling bad is just – he tucks a piece of his soul away for safekeeping – too hard.


End file.
